MOL knitters

Ah, that helps. Thanks.

Yes, KnitKnack carries the Manos silky... I bought a few skeins in a tweedy brown and a tweedy tan at the Black Friday sale for a scarf for Mr. PeggyC.

As for the Madelintosh, don't take what I said too seriously, because I bought more of that, too. ;-) Once you wear it, it seems to soften up. It just wasn't as soft as I expected when I started working with it.

I just made a Madelinetosh hat. With every inch of the leftovers, I made a garter stitch coaster, because i just like looking at the color. Sorry it's sideways!

Really gorgeous, j r. Was it one of the Woolly Wormhead hats?

I'm thinking if I get something nice like that, my teen will mistake it for a simple beanie but I'll derive some pleasure out of knitting it. How warped is it that I'm not just going out and buying a cheap beanie for him?

The Manos colors are beautiful, too. Guess it's time to get over to Knitknack.

He might like the Turn a Square hat, which would be great fun to knit.

http://brooklyntweed.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_4&products_id=13

I thought about that. I made one once for my brother and would like to use up some odds and ends and make a few more sometime. But I think this time I'm going to make the ski beanie from Son of Stitch and B****. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Then I can move on to more interesting knits.

OK, anybody have some bright ideas about how to shrink a hat just a little bit? I knitted one the other day from a pattern in Hip Knit Hats, and it was perfect. Today, I made it again, but with a yarn that needed a slightly bigger needle, so I tried to compensate by making the smaller size. It's still just a little too big. I toyed with the idea of felting it (it's 100% wool) but I'm afraid it would come out the right size for one of my cats.

Thoughts???

Felt carefully?

Find someone with a big head?

If it's a lost cause otherwise, you can try felting it in the sink to control the shrinkage. But my experience is that felting tends to pull things up shorter rather than in width-wise.

You could also rip it out and knit it on smaller needles, or you could rip out the ribbing, pick up the stitches and knit the same hat in the opposite direction. When it was done, you could push one inside the other. Clear as mud? My alltime favorite hat pattern is Meg Swansen's dubbelmossa, which uses that technique, more or less.

Wow, j r, that's amazing! Double-knitting the Celtic beanie was one thing (and harder to get gauges to match than I'd have liked), but that hat is beyond.

I think I'm with you, otherwise. Peggy, can you stand to frog and start over?

Finding someone with a big head might be my best bet. Fortunately, my nephew has a ton of curly hair, so maybe he's the chosen victim.

Hand felting might be worth trying, but if it makes things shorter rather than narrower, I'm out of luck.

I suppose I could frog, although I would hate it. What would make it worst is picking out the ends I wove in.

Still, it's only a day's work, and it won't take long to do it over in a smaller size. I don't want to go with a smaller needle, because it would be quite tight work. But I could work the crown so that it's two rows smaller, which would cut down on the stitch count per row on the sides and narrow it down a bit. I love the yarn and colors (it's Debbie Bliss's luxury Donegal tweed) and would like to make this work properly.

*sigh*

I guess it's going to come down to frogging.

Where's the emoticon for a tantrum?? :L

Oh, and I have a new entry in the Most Inscrutable Patterns contest. This is from a pattern for a bolero/shrug, and it's from the section on making up:

"Fold wide centre portion in half. Fold end pieces in half and sew together the cast on sts and the cast on edge of the centre extension, and the cast off edge of the centre extension, and the final casting off. Do not press."

No, there's no diagram.

I think it's time to go to bed.

I liked the big-haired nephew idea. Though I'm much more willing to frog and start from scratch than I ever used to be.

I'm getting better about frogging. It takes time to adjust to the idea of shrugging and pulling the needle out. It's a little like meditation, in that you have to exercise good mental control and not dwell on the negative aspects.

But I am still considering the big-hair nephew.

I'm very much a fan of the process, more than the product. But if the work would be laughed off the playground, away it goes. Sometimes it comes down to an economic assessment: Would I spend $x (where x = yarn cost) on a readymade sweater that had such a flaw?

I am working on a Cassis out of beautiful black-purple Dream in Color Smooshy that only last week was part of a valiant but shapeless cabled vest. BabyCocktail patterns are great!

Here's another thought: I can use this hat as a project to practice hand felting, which I've never tried. And I have enough yarn left to make it all over again in a smaller size.

I had a real heartbreak yesterday. I had to throw away two skeins of donegal tweed in a gorgeous forest green with gold and ivory flecks, because SOMETHING got at it in the attic. I keep all my wool in sealed freezer bags with the air squeezed out of them, so I'm mystified as to how a moth got in there, but it was all chewed up to hell. I would have needed to make dozens of knots to reconnect all the loose ends I found when I opened the bag.

Oh, Peggy, what a bummer. I'm thinking maybe the moth was there to start with. That really stinks.

Yeah, that makes sense. It really makes me worry about the rest of the stash I have packed away in bags.

I tried hand felting that hat, and it made no difference at all that I could see to the size, although it did get somewhat fuzzier. So I decided to go for broke and popped it into a pillowcase held closed with a rubber band and tossed it in with a load of wash in hot water.

And now I think it's perfect. It shrank about an inch all around after one cycle.

Great about the hat!

Fingers crossed that that one bag was an isolated moth incident.

Agreed about the process, j r. I spent a movie's-worth working on a waves cowl (pattern on Ravelry) the other night then wound the yarn back up at the end. Not sure whether I'm not so keen on the pattern, or whether I just need to go down a needle size. It's harder to frog a whole vest or sweater, but I have a sweater project that's been nearly completed then ripped way back twice. Hoping to have a sweater from it one of these years!

My mother, who owned a yarn store for a while, has always been good at identifying knitter personality types. Some plug away until it's done no matter what. Others are engaged and happy with the activity, even if nothing results. I'm more the latter, I guess. I don't want to think too hard about that. ;^)

I don't think I'm either of those personalities, entirely. I will plug away until it's done, but only if it's engaging me along the way. I seem to need to see progress, but a project will lose my interest if it's just miles of stockinette stitch. I think that's why I love doing lace and cable patterns, and why I love multi-colored yarns. I'm in it for the process and the end result.

PeggyC said:

Here's another thought: I can use this hat as a project to practice hand felting, which I've never tried. And I have enough yarn left to make it all over again in a smaller size.

I had a real heartbreak yesterday. I had to throw away two skeins of donegal tweed in a gorgeous forest green with gold and ivory flecks, because SOMETHING got at it in the attic. I keep all my wool in sealed freezer bags with the air squeezed out of them, so I'm mystified as to how a moth got in there, but it was all chewed up to hell. I would have needed to make dozens of knots to reconnect all the loose ends I found when I opened the bag.

Do you have a chest freezer? I would throw everything in the freezer for a day, take it out for a day, and put it back in for a day... moth infestation is a total nightmare. I've been through it more than once, unfortunately.

Ooooooo, that's an excellent idea. We don't own a chest freezer, but we've been talking about buying a small one for the basement.

I'm afraid this wasn't an isolated incident. A year or two ago I had a similar experience with a few skeins of Noro.... I didn't realize at the time what it was, and I blamed the yarn itself for all the knots I was having to tie. Also, my husband recently took out a suit to wear to his father's funeral, only to find it was riddled with moth holes.

I patiently dealt with the Noro problem and then felted the piece so all the knots basically disappeared into the fabric. Too bad there are too many breaks in the most recent skeins for this to be feasible.

On the other hand, maybe I could use it as an exercise in learning to trust spit splices.

HEY. Maybe I can just wait until the weather gets colder, then put all the yarn out on the deck for a couple of days.

Tonight might suffice! It's chilly out there.

I'm now three projects down with spit splicing. Love! Two were bulky, one an easily feltable aran, so that helps.

I've always found the whole idea of spit splices terrifying. I'm totally convinced it would break apart as soon as I was, say, three rows down from the splice, and ruin the whole thing. Am I paranoid?

You're definitely paranoid. I find spit splicing (gross as it is) works better than anything else. Or maybe I like it because, for the life of me, I just can't weave in my ends very well. They always look wonky.

Oh my god, I'm totally trying spit splicing next time I use a animal fiber. I had no idea what it was and I googled it, found a youtube video and am amazed! So cool.

Spit splicing, when it works, is easy and foolproof. If you've ever felted anything unintentionally, you know how sturdy it can be.

It doesn't work on some fibers, though. I'm knitting with a merino/alpaca blend that will not splice, so I had to learn to do a Russian join. That's a good one to know if you don't like to spit.

Oh, that's nice too.